Obama pictured in Indonesia   Photographs of a young Obama turn up days before his visit to the country. "One of the reasons that he is so cool and non-combative is that he learned to deal with this teasing culture,"  Read Article  

 Junk food could be addictive 'like heroin'Rats became 'hooked' on sausage and cheesecake in same way as drug abusersBy Steve Connor, Science EditorMonday, 29 March 2010Read Article

Twits who ruin Twitter: Why some stars and PRs miss the point of tweeting "Britney's feed is sanitised, tedious vainglory, merely a bland sales pitch" By Mark Borkowski
Monday, 13 April 2009


I'm waiting for the first big Twitter catastrophe. And if you think it came from the hackers who worked into the instant messaging site in January and gave away access to the live output of celebrity Twitterers – from Barack Obama to Britney Spears – you'd be wrong. The real disaster is going to come from the carpetbaggers and snake-oil medicine men who – on behalf of lazy brands and celebrities – are abasing the purity of Twitter, sullying the well of instant thoughts with blandishments, banalities, poor research and self-absorption. Many celebrities are employing agents, social media experts and others to filter their tweets (Twitter postings) to the point of pointlessness. Britney Spears is the prime example. They may be upfront about it, signing tweets with the words "Adam – Britney's manager", but if they think that letting the world know Britney has been to the movies with her dancers is exciting, or where Twitter is at, they've got another think coming. "Yes! This is the real Britney Spears!" announces the site proudly. No, it isn't. Twitter can turn a celebrity's reputation around if the celebrity in question is honest, upfront and, most of all, engaging. Jonathan Ross, post-Sachsgate, signed up to Twitter, turned on the gregarious charm and gained 180,000 followers, endlessly communicating with his fanbase in the same manner he does in the flesh. He proved himself real by posing in front of his Twitter account for a photo. No wonder he won a Bafta nomination for his chat show – he has Twitter to thank for it. It's also obvious that Phillip Schofield's engaged use of Twitter has left his brand in a stronger position than that of his former co-presenter Fern Britton, who has not engaged with social networking at all. Her recent departure from This Morning, reputedly over spats about money, proves it. Ross and Schofield are two celebrities who realise that Twitter is about conversation, not sales pitch and image management. Someone who doesn't get it is Simon Cowell, who took three days to respond to a comment on Twitter by American Idol co-host Ryan Seacrest, who suggested he looked old. The implication is that Cowell is something of a dinosaur. I would suggest that that is only because he is not capable of reacting quickly enough to the medium of Twitter, not because of his looks. He had to take the long way round to get his point across and got left behind. And then there's the Narcissitwits, the people gossip site Holy Moly has outed on their Celebrity Twitter Narcissm chart. Russell Brand tops the list, accused of following the twittering of only 14 people when his own following is 143,548. No 2 is Lily…

 The rise of a modern media empire – with a little help from Nelson As Sir Anthony O’Reilly retires after 36 years at the helm of Independent News & Media, his biographer Ivan Fallon looks back over his extraordinary achievements    On 16 March 1973, exactly 36 years ago today, Tony O'Reilly entered a newspaper office for the first time. At the age of 37, and already a star on the American business scene (he was president of the HJ Heinz company, then one of the biggest food companies on the planet), he had taken his first step into the media world by buying control of the Irish Independent, a staid and down-at-heel newspaper based in his native Dublin. It had cost him just over £1m. Now he went to visit his new acquisition, housed in a shabby building in the heart of the city. The paper's journalists were on strike and were staging a sit-in, but no one seemed bothered by it – these were the old Fleet Street days and someone was always on strike. The paper hadn't appeared for days, but as all the other Dublin papers were on strike too, it didn't matter much.His arrival was a big event. The main television news – TV in Ireland was only two years old – featured him as its lead item, and a modest crowd had gathered on the pavement to watch the former Ireland and British Lions rugby star arrive. Taking the creaky old lift to the boardroom, O'Reilly was introduced to his new management and editors, and laid out his vision for his new company. Related articles More Media News He would not, he said, change the editorial line and would practise a strict code of editorial independence. But more importantly, he saw the Irish Independent as a base from which he would build an international communications company, with operations across the English-speaking world and beyond.It was the modest beginning of what was to become one of the biggest international newspaper companies in the world. Profits at the time were £750,000 – two years ago, before the credit crunch struck, they were £200m. Three newspapers became 128. One country became seven, on four continents. O'Reilly's original stake, all of which he borrowed – he was earning $300,000 a year at Heinz at the time – became worth over £700m.That was the peak of course, and as O'Reilly – now Sir Anthony – announced his retirement on Friday, values had tumbled, attitudes had changed and time had taken its toll. But the company he left, now to be run by his 42-year-old son Gavin, is unrecognisable from the business he took over in 1973. A great newspaper career has ended (or almost ended – O'Reilly will still be around as an adviser) but a great company lives on.When O'Reilly started out in the 1970s, newspapers were regarded as playthings for rich proprietors seeking either political influence or a peerage –…

 Jim Wilson/The New York TimesApple Reveals the iPad TabletBy JENNA WORTHAM Steven P. Jobs said the new iPhone-like tablet computer, starting at $499, is prime for video, music and e-books.